


Insider Trading

by BlueIris4



Series: White Collar Crime [4]
Category: Lewis (TV)
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-23
Updated: 2015-08-23
Packaged: 2018-04-16 18:05:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4635024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlueIris4/pseuds/BlueIris4
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>To get what you want, you have to know what you want.  James has always struggled with that.</p><p>Or, James deals with the fall-out of Robbie and Jean's affair, and tries to find his own place in Robbie's life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Insider Trading

**Author's Note:**

> This story won’t make much sense if you haven’t read the first three parts of [White Collar Crime](http://archiveofourown.org/series/303894).

They don’t talk about the kiss.

These things happen, James knows. Not to him, admittedly – these sorts of things never happen to him – but somewhere, in a galaxy far away, there is a James Hathaway to whom These Things Happen. And for a moment, he and Other James traded places, and Robbie and Other James kissed.

And the next night Robbie went to bed with Jean, and he and Actual James never mentioned it again.

Except sometimes James wonders if they are talking about it, if they’re talking about it constantly, and if they haven’t stopped talking about it since the night it happened. It’s all in the things they don’t say. It’s in the silence between, “Long day,” and “Up for a pint?” It’s in the way they say, “You alright?” and they’re not just asking about the miseries of the latest case. It’s even in the way they groan, “Fucking Peterson’s nicked our excess budget again,” – although perhaps then it’s as simple as Peterson being a prick.    

It’s in the way James has finally got up the courage to leave more than just a spare toothbrush at Robbie’s, and Robbie’s never said a word about the accruing collection of toiletries, clothes and other personal effects.

It’s in the way Robbie sits just a bit closer to him now than he did before, close enough that their shoulders knock together companionably when they laugh, and their knees touch in a way that’s a bit more than companionable.

It’s in the little touches that were never there before. The glance of hands against hands, or across backs, or the way Robbie’s taken to brushing his fingers across the back of James’ neck. Robbie has to see what it does to him – James is goosebumps all over every time – but he doesn’t stop.

It’s in the way some nights James will look up and catch Robbie staring at his lips like they’re the most fascinating thing he’s ever seen.

And more than all that, it’s in one very obvious and very much never-talked-about absence. The absence of Jean.

All of which, taken together, seem to make up a hundred different daily conversations about the Kiss that Just Happened and seem to suggest that maybe it wasn’t something that Just Happened after all. Maybe it was something that had been happening for awhile, and maybe it’s something that could keep happening if James wants.

He definitely wants.

* * *

Only there’s something he needs to get straightened out first, and damned if he knows how to bring it up. He worries over the problem for days, but in the end it comes out at the most inopportune of moments: over the breakfast table when the coffee is still too hot to drink, and they’re running a sleep debt of at least a hundred hours each, and they’re both shivering because autumn has turned unexpectedly crisp.

“Haven’t seen much of Jean lately.”

The remark hangs in the air like a wobbly stalactite. For a moment, James wonders if it’s going to come crashing down and shatter over them both. There’s a lot of fall-out hanging somewhere above all their heads, that’s for sure.

But then Robbie looks up over the top of his paper, pins James with an inscrutable look, and says, “Guess not.”

Impossible to know what he’s thinking. Impossible to know how he feels about it.

James sighs, but silently, and only to himself, because he’s not passive aggressive, no matter what Fiona used to say.  

“Have you two…” he trails off. _Broken up? Called it off? Taken a break?_ It’s been so long since James was in a situation like this himself (alright, he’s never been in a situation like this) that he doesn’t have the correct vocabulary to hand. Perhaps he should do some research.

Robbie shrugs. He looks uncomfortable. And he won’t quite meet James’s eyes, which is a warning sign in and of itself.

“Wasn’t quite right for her, I think,” Robbie mumbles. He’s still staring at the paper, but his eyes aren’t moving and he hasn’t turned a page in minutes. He’s not reading a word. James resents the petty deception, and he’d like to find a way to force Robbie to look up and look at him and actually _talk_ to him about this mess – but he’s not sure he has the right to any answers about Jean. Perhaps more to the point, he’s not sure he has the right questions.

“Not quite what she wanted,” Robbie clarifies into the silence.

James doubts that. He’d seen the way Jean looked at Robbie – like a spider eying a particularly delicious morsel of embalmed prey – and he doesn’t think she was anywhere near finished devouring him when she scuttled off to another part of her web.

Or to put it in less loaded terms – because Robbie really wouldn’t like it if he knew James was comparing his (possibly ex?) lover to a black widow – Jean tended to smile when she looked at Robbie. She doesn’t smile much on any given day, or at anyone really. But she definitely smiled at Robbie. That, more than anything, makes James pretty damn sure it’s nowhere near as simple as her not wanting him.

But he knows there was one part of Robbie’s life she didn’t much want, so he says now, “You mean me. _I’m_ in the way. Fuck, I’m sorry. I can – I can talk to her, or I can clear off for a bit, or – ”

That makes Robbie look up. The look on his face – so surprised, so appalled, so simultaneously irritated and fond – sweeps aside anything James might have been going to say.

“Here now,” Robbie says, with surprising firmness. “That’s not it at all. I meant – look lad, we’re just a bit much for her, that’s all.” He pauses and gives James a significant look. “But that’s how it is, isn’t it? You and me? We’re not everyone’s cup of tea.”

 _We’re_. As in, _we._ As in, _us._

James thinks he should have quite a lot to say to that, but somehow he can’t seem to push any words at all past the cannon ball lodged in his throat.

He understands what Robbie’s getting at, of course. He’s saying that him and James are a partnership already, that Jean has to take them or leave them as they are, and if she’s chosen to leave them – well, that’s her choice, and there’s not a damn thing either of them can do about it. Which is all well and good and probably even true, but James can’t shake the uncomfortable feeling that Robbie has chosen him over Jean. The thought plants a bezoar of guilt-anxiety deep in the pit of his stomach.

He hopes that’s not how it was. He never wanted that. God, he hopes he hadn’t, anyway.

Robbie is watching him closely, as if he can read every one of James’s unspoken thoughts. He folds the paper carefully, too carefully, and then reaches across the table, giving James every opportunity to back away. But he doesn’t. He watches Robbie’s fingers as they stretch out and slowly, ever so deliberately, enfold his hand in the gentlest of caresses.

It’s the same gesture he made all those months ago at the hospital, and then James took it for what it was: a desperate attempt to hold onto something Robbie thought he was losing, and didn’t know how to keep except by grabbing hold and not letting go. But this time it’s something else entirely. This time, James thinks, it’s a statement of intent.

He ought to lodge a protest somewhere. He should say something about compromise and sacrifice and teamwork. He should say something about stepping aside, and doing what’s best for everyone, and not being selfish. But if there’s one thing James has learned about himself in the last few months, it’s that he can be just a little bit selfish sometimes, and while he’s not proud of it, he’s also no longer entirely sure why he shouldn’t be.

So he doesn’t say anything. Instead he squeezes Robbie’s hand tight and wonders if there’s some way he can communicate everything he’s thinking through fingerspelling. Perhaps they can both learn braille, since these days they only seem to say anything through touch.

And through all the thoughtful hysteria, there’s one sudden, surprise discovery.

He’s smiling.

* * *

There are two constants that govern James Hathaway’s existence: he’s certain of God (hesitantly, unwillingly, he wishes he wasn’t), and he’s certain of Robbie Lewis.

The first constant has been tested over and over again, shaken and finally found stronger for the doubting.

He’s never had cause to doubt the second. Not until now.

But ever since the morning Robbie walked into their office with everything he and Jean had been up to the night before painted baldly across his face, there hasn’t been one waking moment where James has felt on solid ground. Everything has had to be re-evaluated: Robbie’s dead-end flirtation with Laura Hobson, his grief for his wife, his absolute principled adherence to the Right Thing, and more than all that his presence as the one constant in James’ life.

All the given values of Robbie Lewis have become variables. Not that Robbie is an equation, even if sometimes James thinks relationships are like geometry (too many angles, and constantly changing shapes). Maybe they’re like Venn Diagrams – it’s as good a way as any to think about all the places people intersect and all the places they’re unknowable.  But James has never been much good at maths. Certainly in all his calculations, he never anticipated Jean Innocent. And since she came into the equation, everything is unstable, everything is reforming, and all he’s learned is that he can’t imagine any diagram of his life that doesn’t have Robbie Lewis at the centre of it.

Most days he’s reasonably sure Robbie feels the same.

* * *

That's the kind of certainty that takes a beating when he overhears the latest bit of break room banter.

“What d’you reckon’s going on? She’s been a right cow all week.”

“Ask Lewis,” someone says, and there’s cat-calls and general laughter. James steps closer, drawn almost against his will by the sound of Lewis’s name.

“Didn’t waste much time, did he. The ink can’t have been dry on her divorce papers.”

“If that. Bet he was in there before.”

“Can’t blame the bloke, though, can you. Woman like that!”

“Reckon she gives the orders in the bedroom?”

“Christ, don’t go there, mate! That’s our CS!”

“Yeah, all right, keep your shirt on. I’m just saying I bet they’re kinky old sods.”

He’s heard enough. James steps forward and the room falls silent so fast it’s like someone’s flicked the off switch. James doesn’t know what kind of expression is on his face but it must be something awful, because Sergeant Crouch looks like he’s about to piss himself. Later James will take some grim satisfaction in that.

Now, unexpectedly, it’s another voice that comes to the rescue. “Leave off, chaps. Don’t you all have work to do? And Abrams – Peterson’s looking for you.”

It’s PC Howe, who’s appeared like a miracle somewhere behind James’ left shoulder, face hard and eyes glittering like an angel of vengeance. He’s only a constable, but his voice shimmers with the authority of Innocent herself and the crowd of gossiping officers disperses so fast you’d think someone had sprayed tear gas into their midst.

Involuntarily James remembers the night he turned up at the station with that bugger of a suspect who turned out to have killed Abbot and the rest. He’d been bleeding above his eye, and worn thin from weeks of existing on nothing but caffeine and nicotine, and thinking more about Robbie than about the bloody serial killer he had in cuffs. He must have looked a fright. But Howe had said nothing. He’d booked the bastard, and caught James when he fell, and somehow even managed to bully him into an ambulance.

Howe had been there, too, when Robbie and Jean had showed up at the hospital together. Now James narrows his eyes, and wonders if Howe’s little act is really guilt for letting slip a few details he shouldn’t. But Howe looks at him, blinks, and his eyes are wide and clear as a freshwater stream.

“It wasn’t me,” he mutters. “I didn’t say a word.”

And he gives James a look so frankly knowing his insides run cold. James isn’t capable of putting together anything like a reasonable response right now. So he just nods, once, in thanks. Howe seems to get it all the same.

“Useless sods,” Howe continues cheerfully, flicking his eyes expressively after Hooper and the rest. “You’d think they’d have something better to do with their time.”

James doesn’t make friends easily – honestly, sometimes he thinks Lewis is the only officer on the force who doesn’t call him a stuck-up knob behind his back – but he takes a second look at Peter Howe right now and decides he quite likes what he sees.

“Thanks, Constable,” he says, and makes a note of who to bring on next time they need manpower on a complicated case. Something juicy. Something that might give Howe a leg-up next time there’s a vacancy for someone to make it out of uniform.

“No one’s business what happens outside the nick, is it,” Howe says, and gives James just the smallest of smiles.

Perhaps not. Particularly when it’s not happening anymore.

* * *

James wonders for all of about half a second if he should tell Robbie that his little affair (if not its conclusion) is common knowledge around the nick. Someone really ought to tell Jean, although James certainly isn’t putting his hand up for that task. Their CS has never really appreciated the principle of not shooting the messenger.  

But he tries to think of any way of framing that conversation that won’t lead to him being shot down in flames, and his mind comes up blank. Anyway, it’s over now, isn’t it. The gossip will die down when there’s nothing to feed it.

Except there is, of course. There’s budget meetings, and staff assignments, and all the hundreds of daily interactions between the three of them that James had barely noticed until they became an exercise in government-approved torture.

“Any update on the strangler?” Jean asks at the close of a personnel review that he shouldn’t even have attended – sergeants aren’t required, but he knows why Jean requested his presence. She doesn’t want to be alone with Robbie and that’s fine, that’s _fine_ , except for all the ways that it’s really not. Actually, James thinks it’s fucked up that she’d rather deal with the two of them than with Robbie alone. He doesn’t like to speculate on what she must think of him – doubtless it’s not at all complimentary – but he thinks it’s a bloody good thing he has no interest in promotion because there’s no way in hell she’ll ever put him forward for it now.

Robbie doesn’t say anything. It’s like he hasn’t even heard her. Robbie’s been distracted all week – a right mess around Jean, not that James can blame him – and it’s left to James to say,

“Fourth victim this morning, Ma’am, and no connection to the other three as far as we can see. We’re waiting on the autopsy report.”

She frowns, blinks, focuses her eyes on him and says, “Sorry?”

She hasn’t heard him either.

James bites his lip and wonders if they should take themselves off this case. None of them are concentrating, and that’s bad enough in the normal way of things, but there are quite literally lives on the line here. Their second serial killer this year, and that’s two too many. They all need to be at their sharpest, and right now none of them have been less clear-headed.

It’s another reason coppers shouldn’t get involved, he supposes. There’s no such thing as a low stakes affair.

He repeats himself dutifully and she nods, looking like it takes real effort to concentrate. James can’t help but think how tired she looks. Her eyes are shadowed and as bloodshot as they were in the week she and Andrew filed for divorce. It’s particularly noticeable now because she’s been looking so much more cheerful in recent months.  

“All right,” she says. “Keep me updated.”

James looks between Jean’s pinched, miserable face and Robbie’s frowning eyes and thinks, with just a hint of self-pity, _guess that’s my job_.

* * *

But despite the gossip and the tension and the heavy certainty that at least some of this mess is his fault, James is happier than he can ever remember being. 

It’s no new discovery that guilt and happiness can co-exist, if not peacefully, then remarkably easily. Guilt is a near constant of James’ existence, and he has precious few happy memories that aren’t spiked with it. Perhaps that’s why even when James is happy – truly, deeply, tail-curlingly happy – it doesn’t much show. That’s how he knows this kind of guilty happiness is something different from anything he’s ever experienced before. Sometimes he’ll be doing data entry, or totalling expenses – the interminable grind of the job that he resents almost as much as the constant assault of human misery – and he’ll catch his lips curving into a hesitant this-can’t-be-happening-to-me smile.

On the surface, little about his life has changed. He and Robbie go to work, and they come home, and they still talk about the job and don’t talk about what they’re doing. The only noticeable difference is that now James crashes out in the bed instead of on the couch. It’s a lot easier on his back – so much easier that it damn near compensates for the awkwardness of lying where his CS had lain just a few weeks before. At first James thinks the pillows still smell like her. He brings his own laundry detergent round to Robbie’s flat and runs the linens through the washer twice.

But if everything looks like business-as-usual, underneath there’s a subtle revolution taking place inside them both. James can see it every day in the way Robbie looks at him and talks to him, the way he feels calmer and more at peace as the days go on, the way Robbie says, “would you pass us the stapler, pet?” and then looks a bit self-conscious about the endearment. James doesn’t mind. He doesn’t mind it at all, even if they probably should be a bit more circumspect around the nick.  

They sleep together, but they don’t _sleep_ together.  In fact, it’s so chaste James sometimes wonders if he’s completely misread the situation, but just when he’s starting to wonder – starting to doubt – because it wouldn’t be the first time he’s added up two and two and got seventeen – he’ll catch Robbie gazing at his lips. Studying them. Studying _all_ of him. And the look on his face is anything but platonic.

The ball is in James’ court. That’s clear. Robbie has kissed him, and held his hand, and somehow in the silence promises were exchanged and commitments were made. There are expectations now, and it’s up to James to make the next move.

He doesn’t know what’s holding him back, except maybe the way every day he has to watch Robbie and their CS do their damn best to look anywhere but at each other. They’re polite – so polite it sets James’ teeth on edge – but Jean’s eyes are hooded and she’s screaming hell with the rank and file. As for Robbie – well, Robbie’s the same gentle man he always is. But sometimes James looks at his partner and thinks his eyes are crinkled with a sorrow that wasn’t there before. He’s a bit quieter, now. A bit older. And sometimes Jean will walk past their office and Robbie will look up from his desk, his eyes following her every step, and for a moment the look on his face will be almost _wistful_.

So while in the night James curls himself contentedly around Robbie’s solid warmth, during the day he continues to wonder if he should take himself out of this situation, or even if he can. They tried that already, didn’t they, and it ended up with James in hospital and Robbie white-faced and shaking and a serial killer nearly gone free. James would really rather not repeat the experiment.

This is the solution all their agonising has come to. James and Robbie, partners in and out of the nick, and the pair of them reporting to CS Innocent. They’re back where they started, really, and it’s not at all how James expected this whole mess to end. It would all be perfect, if not for the secret suspicion that maybe this is what a selfish part of him was aiming at all along.

He’s not sure it’s worked out quite the way he wanted.

* * *

The latest budget review – long, interminable meeting where Peterson peacocks and Grainger mumbles excuses and Jean manages everything with a quiet efficiency that James can’t help but admire – is drawing to a close when DI Laxton pipes up to say,

“Can anyone spare a constable or two? I’ve got a lead on the drug dealing up at Headington Girls. I could use a few extra bodies this week.”

There’s an awkward silence as the collected DIs look anywhere but at each other.   No one is prepared to give up one of their team.

“How about DC Lockhart?” Jean suggests into the hostile silence. “You can spare her, can’t you, Robbie?”

No, they bloody well can’t. She knows it, too. They’re on the strangler case – four dead and no leads and the media breathing down their necks. No one else in the nick would touch this case with a ten-foot pole. They need every available body they can get, and since when did teenage coke habits take priority over murder?

“Of course, Ma’am,” Robbie murmurs deferentially, and steps heavily on James’ toe when he draws a sharp, indignant breath. “I’ll send her your way this afternoon, Helen.”

James opens his mouth to protest, because _someone_ has to be doing what’s best for the case here, even if Robbie and Jean are too busy playing chicken with each other to care. But then he catches sight of Innocent’s face. She’s frowning.

This isn’t what she wanted, he realises. She wanted Robbie to fight. She wanted him to argue back, so she could insist, so she could revel in the bloodlust of battle and the joy of victory. She wanted to humiliate him publicly the way she feels he humiliated her at home.

Or perhaps (although James thinks this is statistically less likely), she wanted him to protest so that she could play the understanding boss, give a performance of magnanimity and offer indisputable proof of her own unshakeable professionalism.

Whatever game she’s playing, she’s lost, and she’s not happy about it. She dismisses them all with a slam of her book on the table.

“Sorry, Robbie,” Laxton murmurs afterwards. “I didn’t mean to take one of yours. I know you’re on a bastard of a case at the moment.”

Robbie shrugs.

“It’s all right,” he says. “We don’t have any leads anyway. It’ll just be a few extra late nights for us, won’t it, Hathaway?”

James does his very best not to scowl and doesn’t quite manage it. He thinks that whatever game this is, right now they’re all playing to lose.

* * *

Robbie is quiet that night. Quieter than usual, that is. He’s never been much of a talker, really, but lately the silences between them hang so heavy it makes James want to scream.

It was never this quiet when Jean was around, James remembers in spite of himself. She seemed to fill all the cracks between them with mindless chatter that was irritating, but he sees now served an important purpose all of its own. It distracted attention away from all the things none of them were prepared to say.

The thing is, James is usually the one who gets stuck in his head. Robbie knows how to deal with him when he’s like that, but Robbie gets himself into a state like this so rarely that James has no idea how to return the favour.

Jean would know, James thinks with a pang. For a moment – just a moment, mind – he almost wishes her back.

But she’s not back, and it’s down to him, and he and Robbie have always communicated better in the spaces between words. So he doesn’t try her trick of brow-beating him into compliance. Instead he says, “Come to bed?”

And Robbie looks up, hearing something new in the tentative enquiry.

He nods and stands up, and James takes all his courage in his hands, steps close and kisses him.

It’s awkward at first – he’s taken Robbie by surprise, that’s clear, and they knock noses and teeth, and Robbie clearly isn’t used to kissing someone taller than him – but then James turns his head and Robbie clasps his neck and suddenly it’s so, so good.

Afterwards, when they’re lying in bed still fully clothed, because Robbie said “I think that’s enough to be getting on with for now, lad,” and James quite agreed, Robbie says, “Get what you were aiming at, then?”

He knows, then. He knows James was worrying about him, and had feared that this new thing between them was so fragile it might break if he didn’t reach out and try to make it stronger, and that James had felt scared and helpless and hadn’t known what else to try. Of course he does. Doubtless it was that same desperate impulse that first led Robbie to thrust their lips together all those weeks ago.

But there’s more in the question than just a kiss, and James frowns to himself, says, “Maybe. I’m not sure.”

* * *

Robbie and Jean take to avoiding each other entirely. James would say they were both behaving like children, if it wasn’t obvious that what’s going on is anything but childish. When they have to interact, they studiously avoid looking at each other, as if no one will notice the misery on either of their faces if they don’t make eye contact.

Which is how James finds himself delivering the latest expense report at the end of the month. Bloody stupid, really, the way they still do these in hard copy. If they’d gone completely electronic, he and Jean wouldn’t be standing here now blinking at each other in awkward silence.

God, what do you even say, when you’re looking at the woman who was your lover’s lover until a month ago?

“This isn’t what I wanted,” he tells her quietly.

She gives him a look like he’s being absolutely bleeding daft and he’s damn lucky he’s got a job in Oxford because no other CS in the country would put up with him.

“I know that.”

It’s evident she does, too. She seems to know that with more certainty than he does. James stares at her, stumped. He doesn’t know what else to say.

“Give me an update on the strangler,” she says. He looks at her and tries to convey how sorry he is and how messed up it all is and how much he wishes they could all go back to the way things were before. Though which _before_ he doesn’t even know. Before James-and-Robbie? Before Robbie-and-Jean? He can’t wish her back in a miserable, loveless marriage, nor can he wish himself out of Robbie’s arms.

But her eyes are hard and impassive and James can’t find any hint in there of the giggling woman with the sad eyes with whom he spent weeks and weeks co-existing in wary neutrality. She’s all Superintendent Innocent, here; Jean isn’t anywhere in sight.

So, “Another body at Carlisle College,” he tells her. “Robbie’s at the autopsy now. Looks to be the same as the others.”

She nods, and says, “Alright, well, keep me updated. Press conference at 4.”

It’s a clear dismissal. He can’t ignore an order from a senior officer, even if just once he would really, _really_ like to. There’s a lot they need to say, he thinks. And though lord knows none of them are much with words, he thinks he and Jean might be able to take a crack at smoothing this over if they can just sit down and hash it out between them without Robbie’s well-meaning if inarticulate interference.

But she’s staring at him with a blankness he thinks a bloody iceberg would envy and he’s got no choice.

“Ma’am,” he says, and for the first time ever that sounds more wrong than ‘Jean’.

* * *

 

The press conference is a disaster. Robbie’s usually a pro at these – his wry sense of humour goes down a treat with the hordes who have a vicious interest in true crime, his rough Northern firmness warns the vultures away if they get too close to something sensitive, and Robbie and that bloke from the Oxford Times get on like a house on fire so the paper is usually amenable to slipping in the bits the police want the public to know.

But this one is a mess from start to finish. Robbie is doing just fine for all of two minutes, and then Jean slips through the door at the back. Instantly he’s distracted – obviously distracted – and his usual good humour is nowhere in sight. He reports the details of the latest death with a grimness that puts everyone on edge, and he doesn’t even bother pretending to address the questions that police procedure forbids him from answering. His evasions are bleedingly obvious, and it couldn’t be clearer that they don’t have a single buggering clue to go on.

5 dead and the police are all at sea. That’s the definition of bad press.

Robbie doesn’t even seem to notice how badly he’s handling it, and that’s a whole other worry in and of itself. Afterwards, James just has time to murmur, “Umm…not _ideal_ , sir,” before Jean is on them like the fiercest of the Furies.

Not Jean, James reminds himself irritably. CS Innocent. Their Super. Even _Ma’am_ would be better. She’s not Jean anymore – wasn’t ever Jean to him – and he can’t think why his mind is insisting on intimacy now when any intimacy, real or feigned, is over.

“What in the bleeding heck was that, Lewis?” she demands. “Are you _trying_ to get the press offside?”

A small fleck of spittle bubbles up around the corner of her lips. James is curiously fascinated by it. Although maybe that’s just because it’s easier to look at her lips – pulled taught in the thinnest line he’s ever seen – that to meet her eyes, all blood-shot whites and blue-ringed in a way that fairly trumpets unhappiness.

“Sorry?” Robbie blinks and stares at her in confusion.

Wrong response.

“That little performance of incompetence,” she spits. “I’m asking for an explanation.”

Robbie flushes, a slow deep scarlet that spreads up from his collar to his cheeks all the way to his hairline. It’s painful to watch.

“It’s a difficult case, Ma’am,” James offers diffidently.

She flashes him a look that contains knives.

Right. He’s to keep out of this one, then.

The tongue-lashing goes on and on until the DCs in the corner are actually wincing. Robbie just stands there and takes it, looking as if he’s carved out of stone, and his non-reaction seems to enflame her more than anything he might say in response.

“…you just have to bloody well do things _your_ way, don’t you, Robbie, and who cares about _procedure_ or working with a goddamn team – it’s all unilateral decisions and you and James acting like a bloody unit of one as if there isn’t – ”

“You’d know something about unilateral decisions,” Robbie interrupts, his voice very quiet and pointed sharp as a dagger. “Me and James, we’re partners, but it’s not a closed circuit.”

She goes white then red so fast it’s like someone’s wiped a paint brush across her face. For a moment they just stare at each other, then,

“You’re off this case,” she tells them. “Both of you,” and she whirls away, frustrated anger in everything from the frizz of her hair to the tap of her heels.

More than anger, James thinks. Misery.

* * *

 

“I hear the super gave you two a right roasting,” Laura says off-hand when he arrives at the scene.

James freezes, bites his lip and looks around nervously. Robbie’s out of earshot, thank God.

“Yeah,” he says, and lets out a long sigh. “It wasn’t pleasant.” At least he doesn’t have to pretend with Laura, or at least not much.

“Rumour is love’s tender dream has gone sour,” she continues, her voice casual and her eyes anything but. She’s watching him closely. Too closely. “You know anything about that?”

He swallows.

“No idea what you’re talking about.”

She just looks at him. She knows. He knows that she knows. She knows that he knows that she knows.

It’s enough to make his head spin.

He wonders for a moment how she feels about all this. It’s been obvious for years that she holds a torch for Robbie Lewis, and until a few months ago James would have sworn Robbie felt the same. Actually, he thinks part of Robbie might _still_ feel the same, and that this might all be nothing more than a speed bump on the road towards the inevitable Lewis-Hobson nuptials. Although adding a fourth person into this mix seems like a recipe for true limb-exploding, eyeball-popping disaster. It’s already too combustible.

And the thing about Laura – the thing that’s probably saved her from getting dragged down into this mess with the rest of them – is that she doesn’t _need_ anyone. She wants someone in her life, James doesn’t doubt it, and she might even want Robbie, but she doesn’t have that all-consuming, soul-destroying, self-destructive need that seems to drive both him and Jean headlong towards the things that are worst for them. She’s not even like Robbie, bless him, who needs to be needed and so somehow has found himself giving and giving to two lost souls who’ve never learned to disentangle love from respect, friendship from desire.

Perhaps it’s not so surprising things have turned out the way they have. Perhaps they’re all doomed to wanting and needing too many things, and having to settle for either what they want or what they need but never both at once.

He can’t say any of that to Laura. So instead he tells her, “You’ll have to deal with Peterson from now on. She’s taken us off the Strangler case.”

And those laser blue eyes – the eyes that see much more than they should, and have the power to strip you bare with a glance – soften slightly.

“It’s the right choice,” she says quietly, and he knows she’s not talking about the duty roster. Both their eyes drift towards Robbie, who’s treating the nearest DC to a positively vile tongue-lashing. “It’s better this way.”

But long after Laura has gone back to examining the body, James continues to watch his boss. Robbie is hectoring the crowd of DCs in a way he’d lay into another DI for doing, and his shoulders are hunched, and his eyes just a bit sadder than they used to be. James suspects that maybe this time Laura isn’t seeing things quite clearly, for all her twenty-twenty vision. Because it may have been the right decision, but James finds it pretty hard to believe that anything is better than it was before.  

* * *

Perhaps it’s not surprising that everything seems to change pace after that.

It’s suddenly no secret round the nick that the Lewis-Innocent romance has gone sour, and the whole force are buckling beneath the weight of Innocent’s unreasonable, ireful demands. James doesn’t know if the knowing smirks or the resentful glares are more irritating.   At least Robbie is so preoccupied he doesn’t notice.

It’s James who ends up endlessly rising to the bait. PC Howe isn’t always on hand to dispel a tense situation, and James’ too-sharp tongue kills off rumours – in his hearing at least – but at the cost of at least two DCs who now refuse to work with him, and a handful of others who go white when he approaches. Robbie doesn’t notice that either, or if he does, he says nothing.

“You could probably ease up, Sarge,” Julie tells him quietly one day after he’s taken care to precisely articulate to Sergeant Crouch all the reasons why he is defective not merely as a police officer, but as a man. “They don’t mean any harm. It’s not like anyone respects Lewis or Innocent the less for it.”

She gives him an uncertain look, and James sees it then – the ‘why do you care?’ in her eyes. Everyone’s probably wondering that. James doesn’t have an answer for them. Feeling protective of Robbie is nothing new, and doubtless only to be expected with the way things are between them now, but he feels strangely protective of Jean too, and there’s no logical reason for that at all.

“It’s unprofessional,” he tells her shortly.

She gives him a look, as if to say that what Robbie and Jean had been up to was mighty unprofessional, and the way they’re handling it now isn’t exactly proper, either. He scowls and does his absolute best not to think about the kinds of things that will be said if anyone ever discovers the part he’s played and continues to play in this mess. He’s not entirely successful.   

* * *

And while they’re fighting battles in and out of the nick, there are more subtle negotiations going on at home. James knows that when things started up between Robbie and Jean, the pair of them fell into bed with nary a thought for tomorrow or all the days afterwards. There was no discussion of the future, no discussion of consequences, and now all three of them are paying for it.

But perhaps Robbie has learned caution, because things with James are advancing along quite a different road. Everything is slow and precise – no words spoken, but every act laden with weight and care. Cleared out drawers and hanging space, Robbie’s switch from buying a half to a full pint of milk, even the way he sets his alarm early on a Sunday morning and doesn’t grumble when James slides out of bed early for mass, all these things say, _you have a place in my life, this is not temporary._ This is not news to James, who never for one moment thought this thing they were or weren’t doing was casual. But the little acts touch something deep inside him all the same. He feels calmer than he ever did, more at peace with the world and with himself.

This kind of careful, meaningful non-conversation sets the pace in everything. So hand-holding has given way to kissing, which has slowly evolved into necking on the sofa, which has become hands fumbling with buttons to caress naked skin. They’re taking it slow as teenagers on the verge of new discovery, and sometimes that’s how it feels to James – like he’s discovering sex for the very first time. It’s certainly unbeaten ground for both of them, and James remembers all too well that late night conversation when Robbie had said, _I’m not sure I can be the way you need._   He’s been trying to be ever since. This both touches and terrifies James, who is only too aware that there are conversations they really need to be having and things that can’t be communicated through touch alone. Conversations about boundaries and limits, likes and dislikes, even (though please God no) past experiences.

James is only too aware that Robbie is trying to give him everything he thinks James needs, which is what makes this whole situation so beautifully ironic. Because that night, James had said _this is what I need_ , meaning closeness and affection and partnership, but not sex. Never sex. And when Robbie had pressed him, he’d said, _I wouldn’t say no_ , because it was easy to be glib when anything more wasn’t on the table. It’s hard to know what to say now it seems like something more might be.  He needs Robbie to understand that it isn’t necessary – not in the way that just being together, and knowing absolutely and without doubt the centrality of his own place in Robbie’s life is necessary – and that neither of them have to want or need anything more than what they have.

But when the conversation finally comes up – when touch finally gives way to words – that’s not exactly how it plays out.

The latest let’s-unearth-a-star reality show is tinkling in the background. Neither James nor Robbie are watching it. Who really watches pre-pubescents trying to land a recording deal when there’s a warm body and gentle kisses within easy reach? So while some child who sounds like Mariah Carey and looks like a Velazquez painting shrieks onscreen, they fall into a slow and languorous exploration of each other – long, wet kisses and the laving of tongues feeling out the intricacies of each others’ mouths. It’s not the first time they’ve fallen from a long day into a long embrace, but it feels different tonight. More intimate. More expectant.  

“You are…” Robbie says, and trails off without ever telling James what he is. The gentle nip of his teeth at James’ collarbone says everything.

“So’re you,” James murmurs and presses his lips to that pulsating vein in Robbie’s throat.

He lets himself be dragged along by the current of desire, and it’s so powerful he doesn’t even notice how far he is from shore until Robbie’s fingers are no longer playing his nipples or splayed across his belly. Hands on bare skin have become hands on his jeans, fingers reaching for his fly. Robbie’s teeth nick James’ bottom lip. Gentle kisses have turned into something hot and fast and needy and Robbie’s hands are greedy, laying claim to every part of him. And it’s too much, too much, and James both wants to press so close they’re one skin and scramble away so far and so fast there’s all the deserts in Africa between them.

“Oh God, Robbie, stop. Sorry, we have to stop.”

He does, of course. He pulls back so fast it’s a wonder he doesn’t get whiplash. He lifts his hands from James’ body and they hover in the air uncertainly for a moment, before coming to rest ever so hesitantly on James’ knees.

“You alright?” Robbie says after a moment. “Didn’t mean to push you.”

James closes his eyes. It’s now or never, isn’t it. They can go on – he can reach out to draw Robbie close again and lose himself in momentary immolation and hope that while they’re pressing closer, another part of one or both of them isn’t retreating faster than the march of the Ten Thousand – or he can try to initiate a conversation about this.    

He looks at Robbie’s crinkled blue eyes and quietly concerned expression and knows he doesn’t have a choice. There are things that have to be said. It’s so important Robbie understands that sex isn’t what he’s looking for here. It’s never what he’s looking for.  

But that’s not how it comes out. Instead, he opens his mouth and what comes out is, “I don’t much like sex.”

 _Fuck_. His stupid mouth insists on going on auto-pilot at the worst of all possible times.

“Never have,” he continues, as if his brain has decided that now he’s put his foot in it, he may as well tread so thoroughly in the mess that everything is soiled.

Robbie’s gobsmacked expression is so comical James feels the sudden, unexpected, urge to laugh. He probably would indulge in a giggle if it wasn’t all so damn important.

Well, now that he’s started on this road to Tartarus, he may as well see it through to its miserable conclusion. Even though he’s had this conversation at least a dozen times before and no one ever understands.  They should have talked about this earlier; they should have talked about a lot of things earlier.

“I mean, I don’t mind it,” he says, because if it’s important that Robbie understand it’s not necessary for him – never has been – it’s equally important Robbie understand that he’s not saying no. “Sometimes I even quite enjoy it. But usually, um, well, I’m not often in the mood.”

Robbie looks at him very seriously, and doesn’t say anything. And although the silence makes him uncomfortable, James is also curiously grateful for it, because it’s so much better than most people’s reactions – horror, or pity, or _you’ll like it with me_. Better even than the silence is the way Robbie doesn’t try to disentangle himself from James. It’s as if he understands instinctively, without words, that just because James isn’t always sure about sex doesn’t mean he doesn’t want kisses and embraces and all the other bi-products of affection.

“But there’ve been people, haven’t there? I thought you had someone a couple of months ago,” Robbie says finally, not disbelieving, or accusing, just sort of _interested_.

James colours, and regrets that stupid fling with Robyn from accounting more than ever.

Robyn, with her long chestnut mane and her huge blue eyes that would have reminded him of Robbie’s if they’d glinted with even an ounce of Robbie’s intelligence. Robyn, with the name and the eyes that were almost right, but instead were unbearable in all the ways they were wrong.

James shrugs. “It was an experiment,” he says shortly. He’s not going to say more – he’s not the sort who kisses and tells – and Robyn deserves better than that, anyway. He feels bad enough as it is about using her in an attempt to even the scales, to create another point in that terrible triangle they’d lived in for weeks. A doomed attempt, as it turned out.

“Alright,” Robbie says evenly, and because his eyes aren’t really like Robyn’s at all, they seem to _see_ everything James is and isn’t saying. He’s always been too bloody sharp for his own good.

“So you’re not interested in sex,” Robbie says, then, “with me,” he clarifies, as if that needs clarification.

James wonders if he’s imagining it, or if Robbie looks just the tiniest bit disappointed.

“I didn’t think _you’d_ be interested,” he says, stung.

He really hadn’t, either, not until recently. Looking back he sees where all the escalating kisses and touches have been leading. Robbie’s been girding himself for this, quietly testing himself, seeing what he can and can’t give, so that when they got to this point Robbie would be sure he could say yes completely and wholeheartedly. He hasn’t wanted to embarrass James by rejecting him in the middle of the act.

Instead it’s James who’s rejecting him. James, who hasn’t given this half the thought Robbie has, even though it must matter to him at least four times as much. He knows he’s an awkward sod at the best of times, but Christ, sometimes he can be a thoughtless prat too.

Robbie shifts awkwardly and doesn’t look at him as he says, “yeah, well, didn’t think it was on offer, until recently.” Then his eyes widen, as if he’s appalled by what he’s just said. “Not that I mean it is now,” he says quickly. “I mean, I’m not saying that – I wouldn’t want to assume – and we’re okay as we are, you know – we can go on – or –” he breaks off, frowns to himself, and it would be bloody adorable if it didn’t matter so goddamn much.

“Sorry,” Robbie says finally, when he’s got himself a bit more together. “I’m making a right old mess of this. Look, the last thing I want to do is pressure you. I’m happy with us just the way we are.”

And now James really can’t help laughing. It’s just – it’s so _sweet_ , it’s so absolutely, completely, 100% Robbie, and James wonders for a moment why he’d ever worried this man might react any differently.

“It’s on offer,” James tells him seriously when he’s got his fit of nervous giggles under control. “It’s _definitely_ on offer.”

Robbie regards him uncertainly, hesitation in every line of his body. “We don’t have to do anything you don’t want.”

James suspects that saying something like, _I want to make you happy_ , would be entirely the wrong response here and might result in Robbie not coming anywhere near his bed ever. So instead he says, “I know,” which he does, and “I want to,” which is _probably_ true.

Then, and because they say all good relationships are founded on honesty, “Although in the interests of full disclosure, you should know I’ve never done this before. With a bloke, I mean. So honestly I’m not sure whether…” he trails off. He doesn’t need to say anymore; that’s enough, more than enough, surely.

Robbie’s eyes widen infinitesimally. Interesting. So he hadn’t expected that. But then he shakes his head, taking it in his stride as easily as he’s taken everything else James has thrown his way over the last few months.

“Well, me neither,” he says easily. “But I reckon we can figure it out.”

* * *

They can, and they do, and after the first few awkward encounters – all fumbling fingers and no one quite sure where to put their knees – James decides that _not minding_ sex has become _quite_ _liking_ sex. Sometimes. With Robbie. Not all the time, but now and then – well, actually, now and then it’s bloody brilliant.

It turns out it makes quite a difference to him whether he’s with a man or a woman. It also turns out that it makes no difference to Robbie. They’re both a bit surprised by these discoveries.

“You can’t tell me it’s just the same to you,” he says, late at night in the dark, when they’re together and sated and he’s trailing patterns with his fingers on Robbie’s skin.

Robbie doesn’t move a muscle, and yet James could swear he can feel him shrug beneath his fingers.

“Not the same,” Robbie says easily. “But just as good.”

For a moment – just a moment – James almost mentions Jean. But he doesn’t. They haven’t talked about her since that strange not-conversation over breakfast weeks ago, and the last thing he wants to do is bring her spectre into their bed. Even if it’s the bedroom – actually the very same bed – Robbie was sharing with her just a few months ago. Besides, no good can come of James constantly comparing himself to her and wondering how far he falls short. Apples and oranges, Robbie would say. He’s probably right.

“Where’s your mind gone?” Robbie’s voice rumbles beside him, and then there’s lips on his throat and hands on his thighs, tongue trailing down his body, warm mouth right _there_ where he’s most sensitive – and there’s just time to marvel at how easily Robbie has taken to this, taken to it with the same easy confidence he shows in everything, even though it has to be eons apart from anything he’s ever even imagined – before there’s no more room for thought. Not tonight.  

* * *

Only no matter how sincerely Robbie protests that it’s all the same and just as good and he’s happy, no really, he is, even this radical change hasn’t erased the shadows around his eyes. James isn’t so naïve that he’d thought sex might fix all their problems. But maybe just a tiny part of him had thought – or had hoped –

Well, perhaps a bit of him had been that naïve.

He knows even less about the human heart than he does about geometry, that’s clear, but even he can’t miss the obvious conclusion. They’re having sex, and Robbie clearly enjoys it, and is clearly happy with him, and yet his eyes still trail after Jean with that sad, wistful sort of look. So it was never sex, or the lack thereof, that was the issue. It isn’t James-and-Robbie that’s the problem. That works. That’s always worked.

It’s the lack of Jean.

And James is hard pressed not to think that that’s entirely his fault.

* * *

James thinks sometimes that it would all be a lot easier if he didn’t care about Jean.

He never intended to. He’d been quite happy with the way they’d moved in and out of each other’s lives orbiting Robbie, like two moons casting shadows on each other, but never quite on a collision course, always just managing to avoid a supernova explosion.

He’d liked that balance of non-interaction. It had worked for them.

But somehow, without noticing it, Jean had got under his skin, in all her curious blend of strength and fragility, in the way she could flay you alive with a half-dozen precisely chosen words and all the time look at you with eyes that radiated melancholy. The Jean Innocent who curled up on Robbie’s couch and gave sardonic commentary on the football, or threw popcorn at Robbie and giggled when he told her to ‘have a bit of respect for the game’, was demonstrably not the same Jean Innocent who struck terror into the heart of the most hardened DCI and, despite himself, James had become intrigued by the discrepancy. He found himself watching the paradox that was their CS with closer and closer attention and he hasn’t been able to stop, although he’s seen no evidence of that warm-hearted woman with the sardonic sense of humour in recent weeks.

She’s been on an absolute tear lately. Every other report is sent back for corrections or rewriting, cases are always ‘too slow’ and ‘too expensive’ and even when James manages to wrap up a break-and-enter in less than three hours, she turns up her nose at him. He’d take it personally, if she wasn’t dragging everyone from DCI down to the most junior constable over the coals. Actually, James thinks he’s getting off lightly compared to most. She doesn’t look at him much, talks to him less, but now and then he’ll catch her eye and there’ll be something almost _apologetic_ there. Although what she has to apologise for, he hasn’t the faintest. If he were in her position – well, when he _was_ in her position – he’d been downright ferocious.

It’s blindingly obvious that it’s all driven by some nexus of misery over the divorce and misery-guilt-shame over Robbie, and James hates to see it. More than that, he hates not knowing how she is and not having the right to ask. He wonders how her divorce is going, and whether she’s had to meet with Andrew again, whether she’s finally agreed to pay for maintenance, whether her son has called recently. He shouldn’t care about any of these things. But he does. And not just because it’s clear Robbie cares, and wants answers, and won’t ask.

Which is what leads him into one crucial, unforgivable error.

He’s giving her a summary on the latest rash of break-and-enters down in Iffley Village and she’s nodding, not really listening, looking tired and listless. On the desk in front of her is a letter with a very recognisable letterhead. It’s from her lawyers. James has seen it often enough to know. So when he’s made his case for a warrant, and she’s blinked and nodded and clearly hasn’t heard a word because the old Jean Innocent would never have given him a warrant on such flimsy evidence, he nods at the letter and says,

“Any closer to settlement?”

That gets her attention.

She frowns at him, and for a moment he thinks she’s going to snap back with something sharp that means ‘none of your business’ but is considerably longer and more cutting. But then she slumps down in her chair and says miserably, “We have to be. Both our assets are frozen until we can come to an agreement, and Andrew’s hardly got any income while he’s on research leave.”

And she’ll keep him like that until he’s so short on cash he has to settle. For a moment, James is reminded what a terrifying woman their CS really is, and how dangerous she is to cross. Then he thinks about the man he’d met that night at the Sheldonian, with his soft features and his smug smile and his words carefully chosen to wound, and thinks he’s not sure how much he cares.

“Good,” he says, with so much vicious satisfaction that she looks up at him with raised eyebrows and a soft, pleased smile on her face.

James tugs at his collar nervously, suddenly aware that she’s looking at him with more warmth than she has in weeks, and her smile is taking him back to cosy evenings on Robbie’s couch and a tentative truce that had occasionally – more than occasionally – been more than a ceasefire. Sometimes it had actually been fun. He’d certainly enjoyed taking her arse of a husband down a peg or two.

And then her eyes go cold and her eyebrows shoot up to her hairline. She’s staring at his throat, and James realises that he’s accidentally exposed the tiny bruise Robbie left at the base of his throat.  She doesn’t think he’s done it accidentally.  

He opens his mouth to say – to say – God, what can he say? _Sorry?_ Or _I didn’t mean to show you that?_ Or, _do you really think I’m so cruel?_ Or even, _this can’t surprise you_.

And all of those things are wrong, and none of them will help, and they stare at each other and neither of them have any idea what the other is thinking. That’s always been the problem, hasn’t it. They don’t understand each other and never have.

“How are you getting on with Inspector Lewis?” she says suddenly, her face a mask of polite professionalism and her eyes glinting like shards of glass in among bitter old coffee grounds.

He stares at her, thoroughly thrown by the question, and almost says, _you mean in bed?_ before realising that’s the last thing she would ever be asking him, under any circumstances, and particularly not _here_. Although what she means by the question is a bit of a mystery.

“Um, fine, Ma’am,” he says cautiously. “Same as always.”

Her eyes narrow. She doesn’t like the lie any more than he likes telling it, but then, what’s he supposed to say here? She’s not seriously expecting him to declare a conflict of interest here and now? It would be too absurd, and too painful for them both.  

“I note Lewis is giving you a lot more responsibility of late,” she says coolly, and James is suddenly on edge without knowing why. “You’re handling his briefings,” – only because Robbie’s keeping a wide berth of her sharp tongue – “you’re managing cases,” – he has to, when she keeps nabbing their DCs and they’ve got four open cases on the go – “and you’re attending personnel and budget reviews,” – at _her_ insistence. “It seems to me, Sergeant, that you’re performing all the offices of a Detective Inspector, and should be recognised and renumerated as such.”

For a long moment, he doesn’t understand what she’s saying. The words simply do not compute. And then comprehension comes in one terrible rush.

“What? Oh no, I – ”

“I’ve recommended you for promotion in the next round,” she barrels straight over the top of him. “Tell Lewis I’ll need a reference from him on my desk by the end of the week.”

He stares at her, speechless, and she gazes straight back, clear-eyed and implacable.

“No,” he says quietly. “No, I haven’t applied for promotion. I’m happy where I am. I don’t want – ”

“You were taken on by the Fast Track scheme and it’s my duty as your senior officer to encourage you to reach your full potential. It’s Lewis’s too, not that I’ve seen any evidence that he thinks about your professional development.”

Colour rushes to James’ cheeks – he opens his mouth, about to say something in defence of Robbie – possibly something so unforgivable it gets him fired instead of promoted – and her eyes stop him in his tracks. Huge hazel holes of unforgiving misery sucking him into their merciless depths.

There has to be _something_ he can say here – some way he can make her understand that this job wouldn’t be worth it for him if it wasn’t for Robbie – and surely she gets that, she’s seen enough of how they work in and out of the nick. No matter how hurt she is, she can’t resent him for taking what she didn’t want.

She can. She does.

“I never wanted this,” tumbles out of his lips. “You know that. This was _your_ choice.”

He looks at her helplessly and she gazes right back, cool and corrosive as a glacier in his path. “I’m not interested in what you wanted,” she says, which is a damned lie if ever James heard one. If anything, James thinks the problem is that she’s cared too much about what everyone else wanted and not enough about what she wanted or needed for herself.

“That’s all, Sergeant.”

His shoulders sag in defeat. He feels his own complete inadequacy more than ever.  He has to stop talking through silences - just once he has to find the right words to say - to say - but then it's impossible to know what to say when you don't even know what you want.  She’s staring at him with that blank look, and she's like an iceberg in the water when there's dangerous currents swirling and you're far too far from shore.

“Ma’am,” he murmurs, and goes before he can say something that doesn’t just get him promoted but gets him bloody well transferred to the other side of the country. She’d do it, too, if he gave her a reason. He doesn’t doubt that for a minute.

She’s a terrifying woman, he thinks again, and hates that in amongst the fury and the righteous indignation, he can’t extinguish a tiny flame of involuntary admiration.

* * *

Robbie doesn’t react with anything like the chagrin James is counting on.

“She’s probably right,” he says quietly. “We’re definitely not doing things by the book.”

That’s not why she’s doing it, though. They both know that.

“Good of her to keep us out of trouble,” Robbie continues philosophically, and James raises one disbelieving eyebrow.

“She misses you,” James tells him quietly, and doesn’t miss the brief flash of pain in Robbie’s eyes.

“Her decision,” Robbie mumbles.

But the more James thinks about it, the more he’s not so sure it was. Not entirely. Jean might have chosen to leave them, but they’d made their choice too. They’d chosen to let her go. Perhaps she hadn’t expected that. Together all of them had chosen to let someone else decide their mutual fate, and by this string of non-decisions they’ve ended up with the worst of all possible outcomes.

Well, almost the worst. Jean could have been fired, Robbie demoted and James penalised. Maybe Robbie’s right. It _is_ good of her to boot him up the professional ladder instead of subjecting them both to disciplinary proceedings.

“You’re to write me a reference,” James tells him quietly.

The corner of Robbie’s mouth lifts in a quiet half-smile. “That so? Well, they’d better be prepared for a bleeding essay. I’ll need half a book to sing your praises.”

It’s said with studious lightness, but the look on Robbie’s face is soft and steady, and James’ eyes are suddenly wet with grief and joy all at once. It’s a rare day when Robbie pays him a compliment, and all the more precious for it.

“And the other half to list my flaws, no doubt,” James manages when he’s got his throat working again.

Robbie grins at him with a glint of mischief in his eyes. “Well, I can’t say you’re much good at taking orders. I won’t lie about that one.”

That’s a come-on if ever James heard one. He smirks, moves closer, suggests, “Perhaps you’ll give me a chance to prove myself, sir.  I ought to show you how obedient I can be, with the proper motivation.”

Robbie arches one eyebrow, warm and amused and gloriously, solidly, his. For a moment the joy of it damn near takes James’ breath away.

“C’mon now,” Robbie tells him, and reaches for him with hot, hungry fingers. “I never wanted a sergeant who followed the rules.”

* * *

And so the reference is written, and the paperwork goes in, and Jean scowls at them both as if she’s lost another battle. But they’re all losing, James thinks. They’re losing every single goddamned day, and he doesn’t have a clue what to do about it.  He wonders when things got this fucked up, and how it is that he’s managed to get exactly what he wants, and yet still feel like he’s missing out on something vital.

* * *

“You miss her,” he says quietly, late one night when the TV is off and the lights are dim and surely Robbie is about to suggest it’s time for bed.

But this is not a bedroom conversation. James needs his clothes on for this. He needs at least one layer to hide behind.

“Wouldn’t say that,” Robbie says finally and, James thinks, not entirely truthfully. “I’m worried about her, I guess.”

James bites his lip and thinks perhaps that’s more telling than anything. That’s how this whole mess started, didn’t it? With Jean unhappy, and Robbie desperate to help any way he could, and then with James unhappy and Robbie torn between his sense of responsibility to them both.

Perhaps getting what they want has never been an option. Perhaps this has never been about wanting at all, only about needing. James and Jean need Robbie, and Robbie needs to be needed. What a twisted triangle they make.

“You miss her,” he says again and despite his best intentions, it comes out like an accusation.

“Ah now, lad, don’t be like that,” Robbie says instantly. “It isn’t – it doesn’t change anything _here_.”

Of course it does. They both know it.

“I know I’m not always very good at talking about things,” Robbie mumbles, “but I do – I mean - ”

Robbie falters and stares down at where his fingers are resting on the arm of the chair. He’s so still, James marvels, always still and solid and steady. Never fidgeting, never shifting, never dodging the bullet when something has to be done or things finally need to be said. Always meeting every demand placed on him. It’s time James carried a bit of the weight.

“I know,” James tells him. “Me too.”

Robbie looks up, grins half-shyly, says, “Yeah?” and then, “Look, let me say it all the same. I may not manage it again before we’re both in nursing homes.”

He pauses, grits his teeth, and then – every word being pulled out of him as agonisingly as if a surgeon were unravelling his intestines – “’m not good with words, lad, but I do love you.”

Each word hits James cold and sharp and sweet as snowflakes settling on his skin.

It’s not anything he hasn’t already known – it’s been there all along, in everything Robbie says and everything he does – and yet hearing the words changes everything. For the first time in what feels like years his feet stop tapping and his fingers uncurl and every nervous fidgety part of him seems to still beneath the blanket of this beautiful certainty.

“I love you too,” he says, his mouth on automatic. It’s so unthinkingly, unquestioningly true that he doesn’t have to pause for even a second to think _do I want this?_ Or, _is this okay?_

And into the stillness of this perfect certainty floods a range of newly understood possibilities. Suddenly, instantly, everything is clear as the winter nights, and he’s able to say, “It’s okay to miss her. It would be okay if you wanted her back.”

Robbie opens his mouth – makes to protest – but the guilty look in his eyes tells James they’re on the right track now, and they’re finally talking about the thing they’ve been studiously not-discussing for weeks.

“Your heart isn’t like a loaf of bread, Robbie. If you give some to Jean, it doesn’t mean you have to give me a smaller piece.”

He understands that now, understands it better than he thinks Robbie or Jean ever have. They’ve both seen love go wrong, both experienced all the bitterness and misery and complexity of loss. Doubtless they think he’s naïve, but James thinks his naivety might just be an asset here. It lets him see things clearly in a way they so obviously can’t.

“I only want us all to be happy.”

That’s the sum of all his wants and needs. That’s the sum of everything they’ve been saying and haven’t been saying. It’s the only possible answer to this equation that won’t resolve.

“I know, lad,” Robbie says quietly. “But you and I are happy, aren’t we? Isn’t that enough?”

James frowns into the stillness and thinks that it both is and it isn’t. It is, because it’s all the selfish part of him wants or has ever wanted – for Robbie to be happy, and to be happy with him. But it hasn’t worked out like that. Somehow all their happiness is bound up not just in each other but in a third person. They’re bound together, all three of them, and he’s not sure two can ever be entirely happy while the third is so obviously miserable.

But Robbie’s face is set, and it’s clear he won’t welcome any more discussion of this. Not tonight, anyway.

“All right,” James capitulates. “All right. Let’s go to bed.”

So they do, _I love you_ , ringing in both their ears. Sometimes, James thinks, there are things that have to be said out loud, no matter how hard or how painful. Some decisions need words.

* * *

It’s easy to realise – quietly, in the dead of the night – that one plus one does not quite equal two, and there’s a value still missing, and that value might be Jean. It’s much harder to vocalise that knowledge in any way Robbie or Jean might accept.

And so the weeks go on and the wind turns icy and the days get shorter and still, somehow, James hasn’t found a way to get Jean to look at them as anything more than her most troublesome pair of detectives and a monumental error in her otherwise impeccable judgement.

Christmas decorations go up on Cornmarket, and carollers make the rounds of Cowley, and Robbie has a surprise insight that takes them on a midnight chase through Summertown to nab the infamous strangler in the act of throttling his latest victim with a line of Christmas lights. Peterson is politely furious that they’ve solved his case, Robbie is smugly content, and Jean gives them a rare but very genuine smile.

It’s the season of goodwill and forgiveness and all that nonsense, and the wayward Catholic in James feels like the time is ripe for some sort of reconciliation. If only he can figure out a way to communicate to both Robbie and Jean the solution he’s devised.

The station Christmas party falls on the first Friday in December, and for half a minute James actually thinks about cornering Jean when she’s had one too many eggnogs and laying out what he’s been thinking. But he takes one look at her strained smile as she trades barbed compliments with DI Grainger and thinks better of that plan. James disapproves of these Bacchanalian revels that are more pagan than Christian and tend to encourage thoroughly unprofessional behaviour, but Jean’s tight smile suggests there’s at least one person who takes a far grimmer view of the festivities. No doubt these events are hell on the bottom line and, unless everyone behaves with the utmost decorum (and they never do), create a whole lot of personnel problems for her in the new year.

So he steers clear of Jean, who’s smiling like she’s just entered the seventh circle of hell and is preparing to charm the devil, and of Robbie, who’s frowning in sympathetic misery. He flirts with Julie and jokes with Gurdip and keeps a safe distance between himself and Sergeant Crouch until Hooper’s smirk catches his attention. Crouch and Hooper and a few other DCs are exchanging amused, not-very-nice smiles and glancing meaningfully at their CS. James follows their eyes and then has to hold back a small smile of his own. Jean is standing beneath a sprig of mistletoe, and she hasn’t noticed.

He wonders vaguely who came up with the decidedly not-very-bright idea of putting mistletoe up at the office Christmas party. It’s not going to do workplace relations any good to have half the force planting kisses on the handful of young and good-looking new recruits. But he doesn’t have to look far to find the culprit. Gurdip is also staring at Jean, looking decidedly nonplussed by this turn of events. Of course. The bloke’s an incurable romantic, and still waiting for his chance to make a move on Julie. James wonders if Gurdip knows Julie’s engaged now, and if someone should tell him. James certainly won’t; he’s caused enough heartbreak this year, thank you very much.

But Jean is still standing there, still unawares, and now the looks are spreading. People are looking at Robbie, too, and none too surreptitiously, but he’s deep in conversation with Laura and quite oblivious. James wonders what’s worse – the fact that the whole force is only too aware of what’s gone on between them, or the fact that Robbie and Jean believe they’ve been the height of discretion. Or maybe it’s the fact that Jean is still standing there and no one is stepping forwards. James may not know much about etiquette or gallantry, but he knows better than to leave a beautiful woman alone under mistletoe.

So he gives Hooper just one warning look, steels himself, walks forward and says gravely, “Happy Christmas, Ma’am.” And before she can summon up the breath to reply – in fact, she’s barely raised her chin to look at him – he leans down and plants the lightest of kisses on her lips. He notices abstractedly that her lips are very soft, and also that he has to bend down a considerable way to kiss her. She’s like a force of nature, most days. She fills any room she enters with her particular brand of astringent good will. No wonder, then, that he’s never noticed how small she actually is. He wonders now how Robbie could bear it; the kiss is murder on his back.

There’s wolf whistles from Hooper and the lads, someone’s egging him on, “Attaboy, Hathaway!”, but he’s more concerned by the way her whole body has started vibrating with tension. There’s a decent chance she’s going to slap him, he thinks suddenly, and doesn’t like to think about the kind of stories that’ll start spreading around the nick. He wonders if Robbie’s watching them, and what he thinks of this development. If he understands the point James is making.

“You could start coming round again,” he whispers very quickly and very quietly into her ear.

He pulls back and looks at her meaningfully. “You make better tea,” he says. He wishes that he was capable of saying anything directly and sincerely. This constant dry understatement gets wearing. But there’s precious few people he knows how to be open with (only one, really), and he and Jean Innocent have never learned how to talk without irony. So he says, “Doesn’t taste quite the same when Robbie makes it,” in as casual a tone as he can muster, and hopes she understands that he means, _He misses you. I like you around too_.

“Oh,” she says, so quietly he hears the shape of her lips and not the sound of her voice. Then, “what?”

At least it’s bewilderment rather than anger that’s animating her features.

“Mistletoe,” he says, and glances upwards meaningfully. She looks up too, goes quite red, and says in a very different tone of voice, “Well _that’s_ unprofessional. See that that’s taken down, Sergeant. Immediately.”

But her smile says something very different from her brusque tone. He thinks maybe for the first time they’re starting to understand each other.

* * *

That night, very late, there’s a knock at the door. James lopes off to answer it and isn’t in the least bit surprised to find their CS tapping a nervous rhythm with her foot on the doorstep.

“The way I see it,” she says abruptly, no greetings, just straight into it, “we’ve got four ways to resolve this situation.”

 _Four_. Lord, it’s taken this long for James to come up with one. Jean Innocent has probably always been an overachiever.

He smiles at her, and steps back, letting the light from the living room spill out onto the doorstep.

“Come in,” he tells her, while somewhere inside Robbie says, “Is that Jean? What’s she doing standing out in the cold?”

James and Jean exchange the smallest of secret, amused half-smiles. They’re ready to talk about it now. Maybe Robbie is too.

And as he closes the door behind her, somewhere not too far off a jaunty Christmas carol starts to play.

* * *

Two constants govern James Hathaway’s existence: he’s certain of God (unwillingly, infuriatingly, still with many unanswered questions), and he’s certain of Robbie Lewis (entirely, undoubtingly, without any questions at all).

Both have been tested in fire and shine the brighter for it. His relationship with God may be an ongoing process of trial and error – more a harrowing ordeal than peaceful communion – but James doesn’t think he’ll ever have cause to doubt Robbie again.

Lately, there’s a third, inconstant truth James has come to live by: he’s _not_ certain about Jean Innocent. He respects her, he likes her, and life is certainly easier with her around. He’s starting to think he might even care about her. But it’s new, and it’s fragile, and he doubts he’ll ever have the kind of rock solid faith in her that he has in Robbie, or that he wishes he could have in God.

But that’s okay. That’s the nub of all these inconstant truths, really. There are some things James knows, some things he doesn’t, and some things he just has to take on faith.

He thinks he’s learning to be okay with that.


End file.
